Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Shameless Self Promotion: February Edition

I know it's been a while since I posted on here, but I promise I haven't abandoned the blog. It's been a busy month, which is going to be followed by another busy month, so look for some more stuff soon.

An article about the partnership between Year Up National Capital Region, a workforce development program, and Northern Virginia Community College. This partnership allows participants to receive college credit through the Year Up program, which doesn't seem very revolutionary, but is actually trying to reshape the way young people prepare for successful careers. I think this is the most interesting and substantive article I've written since I worked at the Seattle Times. I think this partnership--if it gets adopted as a model--has the potential to create some real lasting change around the country.

VPP Chairman Mario Morino's column on the importance of "organizational culture"--a pretty lofty subject, but he does an excellent job of breaking it down to make it applicable to real-world situations.

An article about JPMorgan Chase's support of the performance management system at Friendship Public Charter School.

And finally, an announcement from Year Up about their recent partnership with the federal government. Year Up--which places low-income youth, most without a college education, into corporate internships in the region--will begin to place four interns into the US Department of Agriculture. Additionally, two of its alums were also selected to be White House interns, one of whom will be Michelle Obama's sole intern on the "Let's Move" initiative. This news is very exciting to me, and shows that Year Up is leading in the efforts to re-shape the American workforce.

Hope you enjoy! Let me know if you have any questions or comments!

Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and do not represent the positions, strategies or opinions of Venture Philanthropy Partners

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About Me

Jeff Raderstrong is the Communications and Assessment Associate at Venture Philanthropy Partners. He is also a co-founder of the Social Entrepreneurs of Grinnell, a non-profit microfinance organization based out of Grinnell, IA.
Contact Jeff at jraderstrong at gmail dot com